In a blaze of electioneering, the shadow home secretary has today unveiled a promise to review the rights of householders in defending themselves against intruders – if the Conservatives get voted into government.
Chris Grayling MP has admitted that the current rules are unclear and that the Tories would, essentially, increase the level of violence a homeowner can impose upon those that trespass.
“A defendant is entitled to use reasonable force to protect himself, others for whom he is responsible and his property. It must be reasonable.” – Beckford v R (1988)
Currently it’s all very up in the air. What one person deems reasonable force another may deem excessive, and when you have laws that are extremely muddy like this one it puts the criminal or perpetrator in the driving seat. Touch the criminal and they sue you, resulting in a nice compensation payout for them. Leave them to it and they may dish out some GBH or worse to you or your family as well as stealing your worldly possessions.
We’ve seen in the news loads of cases where kids are vandalising or trying to break into a car and the car owner comes out of his house, beats seven shades of shit out of them and ends up at Her Majesty’s pleasure for it (depends on the judge, though). But then you have cases like Garry Newlove who went out to speak to some youths that were kicking his wife’s car and was brutally murdered by them. There’s also the Tony Martin case that gathered immense public support even though he was convicted for manslaughter. He says he’d do it again, though.
Law abiding citizens fear legal repercussions, whereas criminals don’t. The criminal knows that even if he doesn’t succeed in burgling the house, there’s a fair chance he can sue the homeowner and get a payout, or at least get the homeowner arrested and cautioned for assault. He knows that the homeowner won’t cause any serious damage because in most cases they lack the conviction a criminal has to grievously harm or kill.
But the ambiguity and varying interpretation of the current law means that you don’t know where you stand, you have to take the first blow and can’t pre-empt any assault by surprising the intruder. You have to either hide or let yourself get beaten up first.
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.” – Pitt the Elder, 1763
It’s often quoted that in the USA you can defend your home and make intruders pay the ultimate price. This is not strictly true. This concept, known as the Castle Doctrine, only applies in some states and doesn’t always mean you can use lethal force at your leisure. It’s name originates in English common law and dates back to the phrase, “an Englishman’s home is his castle”.
The Americans do have it right, though, in that the homeowner tends to have the police and legal system on their side whereas we’re all a bit too obsessed with protecting the ‘uman rights of the criminal. It always seems to be forgotten that the homeowner only inflicted damage upon a trespasser because they entered their property without invitation and in a lot of cases proceeded to steal from it.
My own view is, alas, the draconian one that would have seen Tony Martin hailed as a hero not a criminal.
Will Chris Grayling take it to that kind of limit? Probably not. Will he better define the law so in cases of burglary and trespass we know that if we do X, the result will be Y? I’d hope so.
Or is it just electioneering?
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I hope there is a definite change in the law, the Castle law sounds good to me.
I hate this CUNT government for its interference and do gooding attitudes.
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Tony Martin is a hero, I agree.
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I still think reasonable force gives you enough scope to give any would be burglar a good seeing to! Anything more will just lead to vigilanteism. Not that i’m necessarilly against that!
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I’m not sure really, because if A Burglar came in my house now and I had already clocked him and was waiting, if I were then to jump out and assault him, leaving him with, lets say a few broken limbs, I’d get done.
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I despise labour, I would love a labour mp to tackle a burglar and find themselves in court!
When DC gets in next year, I hope its the era of personsal choice, freedom and responsibilty, a hope I know, NOT an expectation!
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This issue should be debated:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8425280.stm
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When a burglar can break into your home, get scared when you appear, fall through a window and you end up being prosecuted with the criminal case only dropped on the day of the trial as a brother of a colleague of Mrs F did then the law is seriously wrong that the CPS and police would even consider taking it so far. If someone breaks into your home, even unarmed, they should have no rights.
I know the recent Munir & Tokeer Hussain case involved him and his brother chasing an armed thug down the street and assaulting him with a cricket bat, but so what? Would you leave him able to come back again whilst your family was petrified in their own home? This man was a persistent reoffender guilty of numerous crimes. He shouldn’t even have been on the streets as a criminal that has no intention of ever changing his ways should not keep being released. I’m a firm believer that the brothers should be released on the grounds that they were provoked into such a state where they were no longer aware of their actions.
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime is complete and utter rubbish. The causes of crime are not poverty – many very poor people struggle to cope and are thoroughly decent human beings. The causes are a despicable lack of caring about the result of their actions on others and people with more than two sentences for the same offence should never be released.
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I’ve just read about that case and I’m raging.
To be fair to the judge he had no option: this attack went well beyond what is permitted in law and thus he had to impose a sentence upon the brothers, but this case reveals what a disgrace the legal system is and how it is hopelessly biased towards criminal perpetrators.
How can it be right that you can be subjected to an ordeal by a known armed and dangerous gang, escape it, turn the tables and end up jailed for your troubles?
If the justice system were on the side of the victim in the first place, this gang would already be in prison. If the justice system were on the side of the victim in the first place, the brothers would have been commended for defending their home and family and this would have been an example set to people that are intent on invading a home: don’t do it or you might end up like Walid Salem.
Munir and Tokeer should be awarded for doing what the police and criminal justice system have failed to do: that is take a known dangerous criminal off the streets. This isn’t vigilante justice either: these guys didn’t go looking to beat anyone up, they were captured and were fearing for their lives.
You’re on the money with your comment about the fact that criminal perpetrators don’t fear the consequences of their actions, nor do they have any notion of empathy.
The guy that got beaten up had over 50 convictions and who knows, maybe hundreds more undetected offences under his belt. Did he fear the consequences? Clearly not, because despite being caught for all these offences he was still out there, with his gang, committing further offences.
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The current system is a complete joke. The case of Munir Hussain illustrates this perfectly. The judge made a ridiculous comment like ‘You should have let the criminal justice system take its course’ I nearly fell off my chair when I heard that. If he had waited for the police and courts to deal with it he and his family could have been killed or at the very least the scumbags who robbed his home would have been let out to do it again. They were already career criminals. Tony Martin should never have been convicted he was NOT a murderer and did not commit manslaughter it was an act of self-defence, those burglars had no right to be in his house. I think burglars should relinquish any right to compensation or prosecution against a property owner the second they break in.
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Labour; tough on crime, when hell freezes over they are. This is the party of ASBOs and community ‘punishments’ and those useless waste of taxpayers money PCSOs. They jail victims of crime for defending themselves and treat offenders as the victims. The police are a bunch of poorly trained jobsworths. I once recall a case where a teenager picked up a mobile phone in the street and doing the right thing took it a police station, this is unbelievable. They arrested him for ‘theft’ and refused to apologise for it. With police that stupid god help us. I have been on the recieving end of bad experiences myself so I am no big fan. There is a few good ones I have had the pleasure to meet but most of them are arrogant bullies and they need training properly.
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Well if you pick up a mobile and are stupid enough to take it to a police station nowadays that is precisely what you can expect – along with several hours of your life wasted. Why didn’t they go through the phonebook looking for “home” or a forename only to call – and if the battery was flat or they couldn’t find someone suitable to call, then leave it where it was? The police aren’t there to help – they are there to resent doing the most basic of tasks that used to be part of their jobs.
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Precisely Frustrated, I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them. I have had bad experiences with them myself as a victim of crime and found them to be very poorly trained. They need to toughen up the selection process and select people who are actually capable and honest enough to do the job. Don’t get me started on PCSOs, they need to be scrapped once and for all.
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homeowners should be able to protect family and propert using whatever measures the deem suitable.
if the scroat hadnt broke in then he wouldnt have got hurt.
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[...] Conservatives have promised to overhaul the law and possibly implement a Castle Doctrine. I am fully in support of this if they [...]